Shark Bytes

A great way to star a Saturday in Ohio in 1963. I could take a worn out transformer and pretend for hours.

By the afternoon, it was time for "Science Fiction Theater." It was the time of the space race, flying saucers were still a possibility and we treated those who studied science with a modicum of respectability. We don't anymore, because we love business people and entertainers like what's-her-name Spears. But that's OK...the Chinese & Indians are picking up our slack. Good luck, next generation!!!

Venus was the "Hot Marionette" with french accent,who managed the La Zoon Alien "Zooney".

I was six. This is my most fond of TV memories. The music, the stories, I only wish my kids could have seen it.

We'll take a trip to Jupitor,and maybe very soon,we'll cruise along the Milky Way and land upon the moon.Tra-la,the land of stardust,we'll zoom away to Mars.My heart will be a fireball,a fireball,everytime I gaze into your starry eyes.WOW.How cool were those lyrics.Sure beats what the kids are hearing these days!

I recently rented this from Netflix and found it to be incredible. Fantastic sets!!!!

Never jumped,this a great show,back from a time when technology was still fun and futuristic and we still had an optimistic outlook on society.
to bad the world didnt work out that way....(thanks Hippies!)
the only annoying character was the Lazoon....Weeelllcccoooommmmeee Hoooooommmmeeee! that got old pretty quick.
I really loved the music used in the show,and Venus's space age pad on an island,as well as the flying supercar!
the theme song sung by Don spencer was cool too!
those marionettes have greater acting range than many of the so called "stars" we have on television today!

Ahh, those were the days! This show was on when I was about 3 or 4, and is the first TV show I really remember (I did see Supercar, but it's just a few disjointed images in my memory and none of the stories took). It never jumped the shark because it didn't have time. The show wasn't as popular in England as it could have been (hence it only ran 1 season, albeit a long one with 39 episodes - no kids show today would dare make more than 13 to 24 to start, and the networks over here would only order 13 new ones for each subsequent season, since the kids will watch popular shows 'over and over again'), and even NBC picking it up in the States didn't ensure it's continuation. Color TV was slower getting into England than the USA, so it wasn't economically sensible to make a show in color that would only be seen in black & white (by the time Stingray was being made, just a couple of years later, things had changed enough that it was the first TV show of any kind filmed in color in England).
Yes, the science was non-existant or hokey; the characters were 2-dimensional and sexist/racist (not a black or asian or hispanic character to be seen anywhere); the effects work was primitive, but showed imagination (something many current shows lack all the way around); but it was fun to watch, if for nothing else due to their attention to detail. I'd love it if Cartoon Network would pickit up for their companion channel, Boomerang, but I'm betting it's a little too politically incorrect for modern audiences (especially since they still have to edit Tom and Jerry to remove 'Sambo' overtones from some of the gags, and had to redub the housekeeper to get rid of her 'mammy-isms').

If you liked "Team America: World Police," give a tip of your cap to "Fireball XL-5" and its brethren. In fact, when "Team America" was released, I honestly felt that the reviewers and publicists paid too little attention to the obvious influence of Supermarionation shows like "Fireball" (unless these "experts" were too young to have any idea, and actually thought marionette characters on film were something original). At any rate, I second the accolades that others have given this show. Was it goofy and campy? But of course -- and even we kids who watched it at the time knew it (as we were mocking the puppets' jerky walks). But still ... we watched it! And so should anyone who's never seen it (go ahead, order a tape of old episodes for your kids/grandkids/nephews and nieces -- they'll laugh at it, but they'll love it). I'm not the first to say this, but had "Fireball" ever mistaken itself for classic television, it would have deserved a shark jump from Day One. But it knew exactly what it was and what it was trying to accomplish, and for a kiddie sci-fi show that debuted four decades ago, it was -- and is -- pretty darned entertaining.

The undersea show referred to was called "Diver Dan". It wasn't a whole show, but a cartoon that they used to show on "Sheriff John's Lunch Brigade". It was memorable for the superimposing of live-action talking lips onto stone-cold, unmoving animated faces. The song went: "You know in the deep there's adventure and danger, that's where you'll find Diver Dan. The sights that he sees are exciting and stranger than ever you'll see on the land...he moves among creatures with frightening features...he protects and he saves his friends under the waves..." sung like a sea-chantie.

This is by far one of the best Supermarionation series ever. Love it. Love the closing theme. I feel sorry for those unfortunate people who have a fear of marionettes because they cannot enjoy this series or the others by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson.

"Fireball XL-5" was cheap, goofy, hokey and ... classic. My sister and I thought so at the time (we were only in elementary school), but we still enjoyed watching it. The kids in my neighborhood used to have fun imitating the jerky, head-bobbing puppet walk of Steve Zodiac and the other characters. Look at the Orbitz commercials today and you'll see the unmistakable influence of shows like "Fireball," "Supercar," "Thunderbirds" and other Supermarionation productions. "Fireball" never jumped the shark, because it never pretended to be anything other than what it was: a fun, entertaining, low-budget outer space kids' show that didn't take itself too seriously. And for anyone who misses it or is dying to see what it was like, the episodes are easily available on videocassette and DVD (I bought a three-episode tape and played it for my niece, who cackled as hard as I once did). Sing along with me now, "I wish I was a spaceman, the fastest guy alive ..."

This program is one of my strongest childhood memories, and yes, I caught "The Thunderbirds" when I could, too. I owned a large collection of Fireball XL-5 paraphernalia, including a 2-foot long replica of the ship with a detachable nose section which housed small plastic characters. The larger body of the ship had side panels which opened to allow the launching a red plastic missiles, which actually shot on a spring-loaded system (cool). I had larger plastic characters as well which rode around on the little hover cycles they used. I also had a launching pad setup which used a little model of the ship and springs to send it down long plastic track, and at the end, it would strike an area that would trigger the ship to "lift off" the carrier it was attached to. This was great stuff for an 8-year-old in the 60s, let me tell you.

This is one of the earliest TV shows I can remember. Since we only had black & white tv's at the time, I never knew that it *wasn't* in color. Among us kids, adding the prefix "XL5" to anything automatically made it cool!

Actually, it may be lack of color, as I understand (I haven't seen the show since I was a youngster, years before we got our first color-TV set) that "Fireball XL-5" was supposedly filmed in black-and-white. This was a surprise as NBC broadcast the show here in the 'States, and at the time (1963), NBC was beginning a rapid conversion of it's remaining black-and-white facilities and programs to color (which, except for occasional old movies, would be completed by the end of 1965). You would think NBC would have pressured Gerry Anderson to "film 'Fireball XL-5' in color!". Had it been in color, the reruns might still be widely syndicated today.

This was one of the shows made by the same group that made "Stingray" and "Supercar" (Mike Mercury). They also did a show called "Torchy the battery boy" Fireball XL-5 had good music. Only think i did not like was the strings appeared sometimes. Show as said to be filmed in "Supertmarination"